It's All Make-Believe
by Screaming Faeries
Summary: When Fred & George got hold of a wand for the first time ever, and caused some accidental mayhem during a pretend game with their toddler brother, Ron. Poor Ronnie can never look at a spider - or a teddy bear - in the same way again. Written for the Female Characters Prompt Challenge (Anne Shirley).


**A.N: **For the Female Character Prompt Challenge on the HPFC. 1/10 - Anne Shirley: Anne had a massive imagination. Write about a child playing a make-believe game. Alternatively, write about a strange and vivid dream.

* * *

oOo

"I'm very tired, dears," Mrs Weasley was yawning, as she jiggled a two year old Ginny on her hip. The toddler had been crying pretty much all day, but she was finally settled, asleep on her mother. Ron, Fred, George and Percy had just finished their late lunch, which Mrs Weasley had managed to prepare with several waves of her wand, whilst trying to console Ginny. "I think I will go have a little lie down, while Ginny is asleep. You should all go play outside, dears." She placed her wand on the fireplace, so she could hold Ginny with both arms.

"Mother, you are aware that I have a _lot _of things to do? I haven't got time to go play outside with my baby brothers," said Percy pompously, puffing out his chest and looking important. "I will be upstairs, in my bedroom, _working_." He stood up, and pushed his chair back under the table.

Mrs Weasley sighed, looking defeated. The bags under her eyes were quite huge. Percy was only a child too; he didn't really have a lot of work to do. But he was getting older, and he would be going to Hogwarts soon. Since Bill and Charlie were off for Hogwarts and not around the house as often, he seemed to regard himself as the eldest brother and therefore quite important in the family. There was simply no point arguing with him. "Well then, do you think you could watch your brothers playing in the garden? Your window does look right out onto the back yard," Mrs Weasley gave Percy a small smile. "You can keep an eye on your troublesome little brothers for me, and tell me if they are doing anything naughty!"

Percy's eyes lit up. Mrs Weasley knew that she had hit his sweet spot; Percy loved nothing more than getting his younger siblings into trouble.

George rolled his eyes expressively and pushed his empty plate back. "We never get into trouble, mum."

"Yeah, never ever," Fred bared his teeth at Mrs Weasley in a big smile. There were bits of sandwich still stuck between his teeth. Mrs Weasley cringed slightly, but smiled back.

"Well, Percy will be watching you just in case. So behave yourselves and look after little Ron." She reached out a hand and patted Ron's fiery red head fondly, then turned around and headed for the stairs. Percy hurried after her, his chest still thrust outwards.

"I will be in my bedroom, watching you," he added, his narrowed eyes focused on Fred and George. When he disappeared from view, the twins stood up from their seats and helped Ron down, then walked out of the back door.

It was a bright, summery day, which was unusual for April. Most of this month had been rainy and dull, meaning they couldn't play outside as much as they had liked to. George instantly hit his twin brother, yelling, "tag!" They ran around the garden for a few minutes, leaving Ron sitting on the step, hugging his teddy bear.

But it wasn't long before they were bored. The twins came back to the front of the garden to sit beside Ron, looking at each other questioningly.

"What shall we play?" Fred asked George, with a yawn.

"I don't know. Something Ron can play too," George replied. They both looked at their younger sibling, who wasn't paying attention to either of them. He was holding his battered old teddy bear out in front of him, and talking in some nonsensical language. Suddenly, George's eyes brightened, and he started pulling something out of his jeans pocket.

"What are you doing?" Fred asked.

"Do you remember Dad telling Mum about that big spider?" George was saying excitedly. He pulled a folded newspaper clipping out of his pocket at last, and spread it out. The headline read: _"ESCAPED ACROMANTULA FINALLY CAUGHT IN THE AMAZON RAINFOREST – ILLEGAL ENGLISH ACROMANTULA BREEDER AWAITING PROSECUTION FOR DELIBERATE RELEASE OF THE ACROMANTULA."_ The headline was in huge block capitals, but the twins weren't reading the writing – they were looking a little lower down at the black and white picture that accompanied the story. The huge spider only looked so huge, as it was next to about seven wizards, all with their wands raised. The picture showed each wizard sending a jet of white light out at the spider at the same time, and the thin, bright streams of light would bind around the monster, bringing it's huge, horrible hairy body down to the ground.

"Cool," Fred exclaimed, taking the newspaper cutting from his twin brother and holding it up to his face, so he could see the picture clearer. He turned it around to show Ron, who had shown a sudden interest in the piece of paper and was reaching out with a pudgy hand to grab it. He recoiled when he saw the moving picture of the angry spider.

"No!" He shouted, and covered his face with his teddy bear. "Nasty spider!"

"It's okay Ronnie, it's just on the page, look," George flicked the paper. "It's not real."

"Well, it is," Fred corrected.

"Yeah, but it's not like it's in our back garden, is it?" George stuffed the page back into his pocket. "Ron, we're going to play a new game now."

Ron looked up from behind his teddy bear, waiting. Fred was waiting too, listening with bated breath.

"Let's pretend we're in the big Amazon Rainforest, and we're hunters that found it in a cave and now we're running away!" George jumped up suddenly, grabbing Fred's arm. "Ron! Fred! Quick, it's there!" He shrieked excitedly, pointing at Ron's teddy bear. Ron dropped the teddy in shock and crawled over to his older brothers.

Then, everything became real. Fred and George had excellent imaginations, and they could vividly see and feel the rainforest around them. The small patch of vegetables Mrs Weasley grew suddenly transformed into a vast, black lake with rocks surfacing so they could jump across it. The cabbages that were lurking at the top of the soil became the heads of scaled crocodiles and alligators. Fred and George shrieked as an imaginary crocodile snapped at their ankles, and they hopped across the lumps of soil of the vegetable patch, to the other side. "Quick, Ron, come across the lake!" shouted Fred. Their little brother had staggered to his feet and was rushing over to them, laughing. He crossed the vegetable patch aimlessly. "Ron, be careful! You're stepping right on the crocodile," Fred shouted as Ron stumbled over a cabbage.

George reached out and grabbed Ron's spare hand and dragged him over to the other side of the vegetable patch. "Phew!" He breathed in relief. Ron laughed and clapped, waving his teddy in the air.

Fred lunged back. "Oh no! The monster spider came over with Ron!" He reached down and grabbed the teddy bear out of Ron's hand quickly, and threw it over the vegetable patch, where it landed with a soft thud on the grass. Ron stood, blinking for a moment, and then burst into tears. He started to crawl across the vegetable patch to get his teddy, whilst Fred and George ran in the opposite direction, towards the huge pear tree that sat at the bottom of their garden.

"RON!" yelled George, acting panicked. "What are you doing? Run away quick! It's going to eat you!"

Ron had finally reached his teddy. He buried his face in its chest, and turned around to head towards his brothers again, dragging the stuffed bear along with him. Fred and George backed up against the tree, looked up to the branches above them, and then looked at each other. They didn't need to speak; they just started climbing up the trunk, surprisingly agile for two young children.

When they had reached a safe height away from the "spider", they looked down at Ron. He had left the teddy bear behind him, and was grabbing random parts of the tree trunk to try and climb up after his brothers. He looked up at them, and his big brown eyes suddenly started to water again, and his bottom lip protruding and wobbling. There was a few seconds of silence, and he started to cry loudly again, beating his chubby fists on the tree trunk. There was a flash of spectacles in a window on the third floor of the Burrow, and Fred and George knew that Percy was peering out, wondering what Ron was crying at.

"We need to do something, he's ruining the game!" George exclaimed, irritated. Fred looked over at his twin, racking his brains.

"I know. I wish we didn't have to play with us sometimes, he just doesn't know how to play."

"We should go back down there; he's just going to keep screaming." They started back down the tree. Ron's cries instantly waned when they reached the bottom. He crawled back over to his teddy and started sucking on its arm.

"I think I have an idea, George," whispered Fred. He glanced back up at Percy's window again, but the sun was shining too brightly, creating a reflection of the sky, so he couldn't see whether Percy was sat staring out at them or not. "Wait here with Ron." He skipped back towards the open door and into the kitchen quietly. Mrs Weasley was still in bed, and Percy hadn't come rushing downstairs to see what he was doing, so Fred presumed he hadn't been looking out of the window when he came inside.

He tip-toed into the living room, and spotted it. Mrs Weasley's wand was still on the fireplace, where she had left earlier. He reached up and grabbed the short, thin stick and stuffed it into the waistband of his shorts, covering it with his t-shirt. He ran back outside quickly, to where his two brothers were sat by the pear tree. "Quick, come behind here," he muttered, making sure to keep looking up at Percy's bedroom window. George pulled Ron to his feet, and the three of them crept around the back of the pear tree and out of sight.

Fred brandished the wand with a flourish, looking proud. George gasped. "Awesome," he said slowly, looking impressed. "It's it Mums?"

"Yep," Fred replied, waving it around airily. "I took it off the fireplace."

"What are you going to do with it?"

Fred pointed the wand directly at the teddy in Ron's arms. "I'm going to make the game a bit more realistic, because Ronnie doesn't seem to understand it properly," he said. Ron furrowed his brow and shielded his teddy away from the wand that Fred was pointing at it.

"No," he proclaimed, batting his hand out and hitting the wand. "No!"

"I'm not going to hurt him, Ronnie," Fred tried to grab the teddy with his free hand. "It's just for the game! George, help me!"

George reached out and grabbed one of Ron's arms, pulling it away from the teddy. In the small opening before Ron wrenched his arms back, Fred reached out and prodded the teddy with the wand, several times for good measure. Suddenly, there was a flash of bright, white light from the end of Mrs Weasley's wand, which extended from the tip and engulfed the bear in the light. Ron screwed his eyes up, apparently blinded by it. Fred dropped the wand in shock, looking appalled that he had actually managed to make magic.

The stream of light broke the moment Fred dropped the wand. It faded from the bear, leaving a stumped silence in its midst.

"Well, that was dramatic," muttered George. "You are rubbish!"

Then suddenly, Ron started to scream. A horrible, high-pitched scream that went right through Fred and George. They looked over at their little brother in shock, reaching out to comfort him, wondering what he was screaming at. Then they realised.

The teddy bear that he was holding was sprouting eight huge, long, hairy legs. Its body grew and swelled until it was round, and eight bulbous eyes appeared above a pair of pincers that were snapping malevolently. Ron was still holding it around the middle, but when it began to make snarling noises he dropped it, still screaming right into the spider's face.

"What did you do?!" hissed George. He backed away, staring in horror at the spider Fred had created. Fred had turned sheet white, walking backwards towards the tree. When the trunk made contact with his back, he turned and started scrambling up the tree and out of sight. George followed, leaving Ron shrieking and wailing on the ground, and the horrible spider scuttling around the garden in a creepy, floating fashion.

"Ronnie? Fred! George! What's Ron screaming for-" Percy had his head stuck out of the window, but then he had seen the monster scurrying around the vegetable patch. "Mother!" he yelled, retreating back into the bedroom.

But Mrs Weasley had already reacted to the screams. She had appeared at the door, and was also staring at the spider that was now snapping it's pincers at her cabbages, ripping the leaves to shreds. She rushed over, and scooped Ron up in her arms.

"Mummy!" he howled, burrowing his face in her chest.

There was a crack in the air, and Mr Weasley had appeared out of nowhere, apparently having just finished work. There was a few seconds where he stood in shock at the situation happening around him. Fred and George hiding at the top of the pear tree, Ron wailing into Mrs Weasley's robes, Percy looking horrified from his bedroom window, and the huge spider, about the size of a cauldron, scuttling around the garden in a manical fashion.

"_Incendio!_" he yelled, aiming his wand at the creature. It burst into flames, and then was nothing but ashes on the ground.

* * *

An hour later, Ron was finally sedated and asleep in his bedroom. Fred and George had removed themselves from the tree, and received a huge telling-off from their parents.

They were upset now, of course, but they would soon get over it and forget about this event. Unlike poor Ron, who would be left with this day forever, the memory imprinted on his psyche, leaving him with nothing but a vicious dislike for spiders, and an inability to ever touch a teddy bear again.

oOo


End file.
